Mushroom Cultivation: Using an All American Pressure Sterilizer

North Spore began operations in 2014 as an urban mushroom farm utilizing low-cost and easily found materials to cultivate mushrooms for local restaurants and farmer’s markets. We began with the Bucket Tek method for growing our gourmet fungi and employed cold-water pasteurization with hydrated lime to pasteurize our substrate prior to inoculation. As a reminder, pasteurization simply reduces microscopic competition in a substrate while sterilization eliminates it entirely.

Our method was effective at reducing unwanted microorganisms in our containers in those early years, but did not eliminate contamination completely and would fail to meet the standards and demand of our current commercial operation. Today, several steam tanks and autoclaves give us the capacity to fully sterilize and turn out multiple kinds of substrates daily and by the hundreds, converting them into familiar products like our Spray & Grow Kits, Boomr Bags, and Organic Sterilized Grain Bags.